Armageddon (55 page)

The drones gave no verbal response, but a pair of them went
clanking
back the way they’d come, going to search the ship. Farah felt better, knowing that whatever fate awaited her and her crew, Therius wasn’t about to escape it.

The air buzzed with the
crackling
report of energy weapons set to stun. Dazzling blue bolts snapped out with pinpoint accuracy. People screamed and a few belatedly tried to resist by firing back with their sidearms.

Farah shut her eyes, and allowed her thoughts to drift to her Uncle Bretton—the
real
one, not the drone. Bretton was dead and gone, but maybe just maybe he’d passed on to a better place. Farah chose to believe that.

Then a stun bolt hit her, and her body convulsed. Darkness closed in around her, and she welcomed it.

Chapter 50

A
s the spots cleared from Ethan’s eyes, he saw what had caused the blinding flash of light. All of the Shell fighters on their tail had simultaneously exploded.

Drone fighters appeared on all sides, and a pair raced out ahead, leading the way to the Icosahedron. Omnius’s escort had arrived just in time to rescue them.

Ethan breathed out a shaky sigh. “That was close.”

Alara nodded.

Avilon’s atmosphere fell away and they gained a crystal-clear view of New Avilon. Its viewports shone down on them like a dense field of stars. Lasers flashed against that backdrop, and explosions flared almost continuously.

The battle wasn’t going to last much longer. Union ships were being taken out just as fast as they could race into orbit, and there were at least a hundred red enemy contacts for every solitary green one. Enemy contacts were purely fighter-class, but with so
many
of them, it didn’t matter that Omnius hadn’t brought any heavier weapons to the fight.

“I guess now all we have to do is wait,” Ethan said.

“I guess…” Alara’s eyes were glazed and staring, her mind somewhere far away.

Ethan didn’t have to ask to know what she was thinking about. “Trinity was already a clone. Nothing’s going to change when Omnius brings her back.”

Alara shook her head. “That doesn’t make watching her die any easier.”

Bang!

Ethan’s eyes flew to the TDS, then to the grid, but nothing was attacking them. “The frek…?”

Then the sound came again, and Ethan realized it was coming from the cockpit hatch. He turned to see the hatch sprinkled with fingertip-sized dents.

As he watched, there came another
bang,
and another sprinkling of dents appeared. The pattern exactly matched the spread of a sawed-off ripper rifle. Remembering the armory aboard his ship and the pair of elite commandos he’d left rattling around in the
Trinity’s
aft sections, Ethan’s eyes flew wide. He was shocked that those weapons hadn’t been stripped from the
Trinity
before the ship had been made into a museum exhibit.

“They’re going to punch a hole!” Alara said.

Bang!

Even as she said that, holes began shining through the hatch. Ethan saw a familiar brown eye appear in one of them.

“Omnius killed her,” Magnum said. “Just thought you might want to know that before you delivered us all into his clutches.”

“Killed who?” Ethan asked.

“That Peacekeeper woman. He pulled the plug on her like she was some kinda drone.”

Alara replied, “He killed her because she was trying to get us killed by firing at Gors!”

“You locked us out of the cockpit and took us hostage to deliver to the enemy. It’s kill or be killed, Motherfrekkers!”

Bang!

Ethan took cover behind the pilot’s chair, his mind racing to come up with a way to defeat them. He remembered the trick he’d pulled earlier with the ship’s inertial management system and sudden acceleration.

“Hang on,” he told Alara, one hand poised over the throttle, the other picking a new setting for the IMS.

But he never had a chance to set it. The cockpit came alive with a gusting wind and a blinding light. Then the light faded and Ethan heard a
screech
of lasers firing, followed by a
thud,
a strangled cry, and another
thud.

Clanking
footsteps approached, drawing Ethan’s attention to the rear. He watched as metallic claws reached through the shredded hatch, tearing it open like paper. A pair of drones came into the cockpit, their optical sensors scanning with crimson beams of light.

Omnius had quantum-jumped these two aboard to deal with the Rictans.

Ethan spotted the pair of commandos lying motionless in a spreading black pool of blood just beyond the hatch, and he grimaced. The drones’ eyes settled on him, and he hesitated, suddenly afraid that he might be next.

“Thank you,” he managed.

The drones gave no reply. They merely took up guard positions, one to either side of the ruined hatch.

Ethan went back to piloting the ship with his hands shaking on the flight controls. Omnius had just dispatched both of the remaining Rictans, and apparently, one of his own Peacekeepers.

“They would have killed us,” Alara said, seeming to read his mind.

He pressed his lips into a thin line. “I guess Magnum was right. It’s kill or be killed.”

“Would you rather we be the ones lying on the deck in a pool of blood right now?”

“No, but Omnius didn’t have to kill them. They’re not coming back, you know. They didn’t have Lifelinks. None of us did. Even if they had clones on Avilon, they weren’t the same people, and they didn’t share the same memories.”

“They came to Avilon knowing there was a chance that they could die in the fighting.”

“And that means their deaths don’t mean anything?”

“Ethan, we saved Avilon, and now we’re going to save our daughter. We did everything we could to prevent further loss of life.”

“But what is Omnius doing to prevent further loss of life?”

“He’s disabling Union ships, not destroying them,” Alara said, nodding to the star map.

Ethan saw that Alara was right. One in every two Union ships had gone dark on the grid. Space was crowded with more derelict warships than debris.

Ethan was taken aback by that. Maybe Omnius wasn’t the real enemy, after all. He’d agreed to give the Union what they wanted, and they’d
still
dropped nanites on Avilon.

But just because Therius’s side was the wrong one didn’t mean Omnius’s was the right one. He was just as guilty of unnecessary bloodshed, if not more. After all, he’d created the Sythians and used them to start all the fighting in the first place.

The vast shell of the Icosahedron drew ever-nearer, and the drone fighters guiding them in banked suddenly to port. Ethan was about to match that maneuver, but his ship moved before he could.

“What the…”

“Omnius is guiding us in,” Alara explained. “He wants you to shut down your engines.”

Ethan hesitated for a second before killing thrust. “Now what?” he asked, sitting back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap.

“Now we wait to be brought aboard.”

It was a short wait. Half an hour later they raced past an inverted city of lights and towers, the tallest of which looked identical to the Trees of Life they’d seen launching from Avilon.

Ethan marveled at the sheer size and scale of Omnius’s creation. It was like someone had turned the cities of Avilon inside out and stretched them into a thin shell around the planet. Although, according to the
Trinity’s
sensors that ‘thin’ shell was more than twenty kilometers thick.

“Where did Omnius get enough raw materials to create something like this?” Ethan wondered. “He must have mined a few planets into nonexistence.”

“Maybe a few solar systems,” Alara suggested.

Dead ahead Ethan saw a small blue rectangle appear. As they drew near, he realized it was a hangar bay, and it wasn’t small. It could have berthed an entire fleet. The drones flying ahead of them disappeared through the hazy blue glow of the hangar’s shields. Then the
Trinity
glided in after them with a faint
sizzle
of exchanging energy, and Ethan saw a vast, empty hangar deck with myriad glowing red circles to denote landing spaces. Without him having to touch the flight controls, the
Trinity
hovered down into the middle of a green-glowing circle, while their fighter escort settled down on matching circles around them.

A mechanical voice spoke, startling Ethan out of his thoughts. “Welcome to New Avilon. Please follow me.”

Ethan turned to see the drones who’d been standing guard at the hatch come alive and go
clanking
out the cockpit, down the access corridor beyond.

Alara unbuckled her flight restraints. “Come on,” she said, and hurried after the drones.

Ethan followed, grimacing as he was forced to step around the bloody mess that Omnius had made of the Rictans. Seeing Magnum’s glazed and staring eyes gave him pause once more.

Everything that had happened since the Sythians invaded was all just a lot of senseless killing for the sake of killing. It was almost as if Omnius enjoyed the bloodshed.

It’s time to get some answers,
he thought.

Chapter 51

A
s the drones led them through the vast, echoing hangar bay, Ethan noticed all of the empty racks folded up along the walls and ceiling. They looked like gleaming black skeletons. Ethan realized they were meant to hold drone fighters, but they were empty now that all of the drones were out fighting the Union fleet.

Once they reached the far wall of the hangar, the drones led them down a broad corridor with a familiar, shiny golden dome at the end—a quantum junction.

The drones activated the junction, causing it to rise on four shimmering pillars of light, and Ethan and Alara hurried to the center of the green-glowing circle underneath. The drones came
clanking
into position and then one of them raised its hands to activate the junction.

Ethan shut his eyes as the dome fell and began glowing with a dazzling light. He fumbled for Alara’s hand and laced his fingers through hers as wind gusted around inside the dome, tearing at their clothes and hair.

Then the light vanished and the wind died down. Ethan opened his eyes to see the dome rising once more.

He saw a small group of people standing in front of a massive wraparound viewport. Beyond that, Avilon lay dark and whorled with the dendritic patterns of light from its cities. As the drones led them to the viewport, Ethan recognized the people standing there. One of them was Grand Overseer Thardris. The overseer turned and smiled. His eyes flickered bright silver in the light of his ARCs, making it all but impossible to see the whites of his eyes.

“It’s good to see you, Ethan—and Alara,” he said. “I would ask who resurrected you, Ethan, but I think I already know the answer to that. Therius will be joining us soon. Hopefully he can clear up the mystery for us.”

Ethan was about to reply, but the next person who turned around was none other than Valari Thardris.

“Hello, Ethan,” she said.

Ethan’s expression darkened.

“What are you doing here?” Alara demanded, before he could ask. She withdrew her hand from his and crossed her arms over her chest.

Rather than reply, Valari walked straight up to them, and before either of them could react, she planted a kiss on Ethan’s lips.

Ethan recoiled from her, trying to spit the taste of her out of his mouth.

Slap!

Valari reeled from Alara’s blow and recovered with a girlish peal of laughter. Alara reared back to hit her again, this time with her fist. But Valari caught Alara’s wrist in a white-knuckled fist.

“There’s no need to be angry with me, dear!” she said, still laughing. “Your husband is the one who seduced
me!
”

Alara shot Ethan a venomous look, to which he could only shake his head and say, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

“That’s a fine defense,” Valari scoffed. “Amnesia! You’re beginning to hurt my feelings, Ethan. Am I that forgettable?”